orm
as much a part of the book as the type itself, or it will miss its mark,
and in order to succeed, and to be ornament, it must submit to certain
limitations, and become architectural; a mere black and white picture,
however interesting it may be as a picture, may be far from an ornament
in a book; while on the other hand a book ornamented with pictures that
are suitable for that, and that alone, may become a work of art second
to none, save a fine building duly decorated, or a fine piece of
literature.

These two latter things are, indeed, the one absolutely necessary gift
that we should claim of art. The picture-book is not, perhaps,
absolutely necessary to man's life, but it gives us such endless
pleasure, and is so intimately connected with the other absolutely
necessary art of imaginative literature that it must remain one of the
very worthiest things toward the production of which reasonable men
should strive.

AN ESSAY ON PRINTING, BY WILLIAM MORRIS AND EMERY WALKER, FROM ARTS AND
CRAFTS ESSAYS BY MEMBERS OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS EXHIBITION SOCIETY.

Printing, in the only sense with which we are at present concerned,
differs from most if not from all the arts and crafts represented in the
exhibition in being comparatively modern. For although the Chinese took
impressions from wood blocks engraved in relief for centuries before the
wood-cutters of the Netherlands, by a similar process, produced the
block books, which were the immediate predecessors of the true printed
book, the invention of movable metal letters in the middle of the
fifteenth century may justly be considered as the invention of the art
of printing. And it is worth mention in passing that, as an example of
fine typography, the earliest book printed with movable types, the
Gutenberg, or "forty-two line Bible" of about 1455, has never been
surpassed.

Printing, then, for our purpose, may be considered as the art of making
books by means of movable types. Now, as all books not primarily
intended as picture-books consist principally of types composed to form
letterpress, it is of the first importance that the letter used should
be fine in form; especially as no more time is occupied, or cost
incurred, in casting, setting, or printing beautiful letters than in the
same operations with ugly ones. And it was a matter of course that in
the Middle Ages, when the craftsmen took care that beautiful form should
always be a part of their production